School choice is not really about freedom. Freedom, of course, is a bedrock American value. But the kind of "freedom" associated with the flight away from integration and toward racial isolation will never lead to a more truly free United States.
As a father, I want what is best for my daughter. As I’ve seen schools become more and more liberal, push liberal political doctrine, and sexual ethics— such as Illinois passing a few years back a new sexual education program that included teaching kindergarteners about masturbation— I’ve very much moved towards either homeschooling or private schooling my daughter.
Not once has it crossed my mind to do so to keep her from “children of color”. Not once has it been to keep her from other children at all. And I know many homeschool mothers and private school fathers out there that have never once thought this way. It has only ever been about her education.
This is a prime example of race-baiting. I want a better education for my daughter, so I’m a racist.
It’s tempting to imagine this means that the first humans called their parents mama and dada, and that those two warm, hearty words have survived the slings and arrows of human history to remain in use today. But the notion is too good to be true. Over time in language, sounds smush along their way to becoming new ones, and even the meanings people assign to a word drift all over the place.
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The answer lies with babies and how they start to talk. The pioneering linguist Roman Jakobson figured it out. If you’re a baby making a random sound, the easiest vowel is ah because you can make it without doing anything with your tongue or lips. Then, if you are going to vary things at all, the first impulse is to break up the stream of ahhh by closing your lips for a spell, especially since you’ve been doing that to nurse. Hence, mmmm, such that you get a string of mahs as you keep the sound going while breaking it up at intervals.
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Papa and dada happened for a similar pan-human reason. After babies begin making m with their lips, they pick up making a sound that involves a little more than just putting their lips together—namely, putting them together, holding them that way for a second, and then blowing out a puff of air. That’s p—or, depending on your mood, b. Alternatively, babies also start playing with their mouths a little further back from the lips—on that ridge behind the upper teeth that we burn inconveniently by sipping soup when it’s too hot. That’s where we make a t or a d. The order in which babies learn to make sounds explains why the next closest usual caretaker to mom is so often called papa or baba (or tata or dada).
Yes, it is tempting to imagine that the first humans called their parents mama and dada. You can believe that evolution made babies start with two sound groups and emotions immediately tie them to people, or you can believe that God designed us to know what to call our parents from the get go. Simplest answer is likely correct.
Upgraded my Infant to the Toddler beta tonight. Between a few sessions, we logged a dozen steps on the pedometer. Still pretty buggy, with a few crashes within minutes of each other.
French child psychiatrists, on the other hand, view ADHD as a medical condition that has psycho-social and situational causes. Instead of treating children's focusing and behavioral problems with drugs, French doctors prefer to look for the underlying issue that is causing the child distress—not in the child's brain but in the child's social context. They then choose to treat the underlying social context problem with psychotherapy or family counseling. This is a very different way of seeing things from the American tendency to attribute all symptoms to a biological dysfunction such as a chemical imbalance in the child's brain.
Love this view. Great article and something anyone with children should be looking at. My wife, for one, was prescribed ADHD medicine before her teenage years and they never had an end date on that prescription. The amount that a person changes in their teens and twenties is huge. Instead of a child learning to deal with their circumstances, their social context, and their body, we dull it with medicine. A bandaid, if you may. My wife came off her meds a couple years ago and has been doing great ever since.
Think before you take meds to solve a problem, as it may just be fixing a symptom of a greater problem.
Here’s the thing. We all have a sin problem. Often times we make mistakes that directly affect others. While sexual sins are often considered the worst, we must recognize that as Christ has forgiven our sins, so must we forgive others. If things are the way they appear to have been, 14-year-old Josh Duggar made some bad choices. Instead of taking this public and ruining his life, the family dealt with it in a biblical manner, seeking wise council and help from the Church. Forgiveness was sought and given. This was now 10 years ago.
As a church, we should applaud the way that this was dealt with– if this proves to be accurate— and see this as a model way of running our families when sin rears it’s ugly head.
We should also, as a church, pray for this family in this hard time. The world loves to drag out our sins and call us hypocrites. It makes it all the more important for Christians to publicly declare that we are not perfect, sinless, Jesus freaks. No, we are broken, weary men and women that have recognized our need of a savior. We need to pray for our fellow brothers and sisters that they stay strong under this attack and show what Christ would want.
Parents Danielle and Adam and big sister Blayke are now a family of eight. The babies are named Ava Lane, Hazel Grace, Olivia Marie, Parker Kate and Riley Paige.
I don't know what I would do if I had 5 more girls. Having one is enough for now. Told Nikki that we are having 5 boys for every 1 girl. So if we have quintuplets next, which I am a twin, they had better be all boys. Now I need 4 more boy names. Oliver, Bruce, Bartholomew, and Harold. Done. If you did’t know, our daughter is Charlotte Meara, her middle name taken from the wife of Aquaman, Queen of Atlantis. Her first is taken from a famous web designer.
Beautiful deleted scene from Parks and Recreation. Wyatt reveals that he’s been sneaking vegetables into Leslie’s waffles for years. Maple seeds! Reminds me of the three years that my wife— then fiancée— thought that cars needed blinker fluid. And then my mom ruined it. My dad was so proud of me and my wife was so mad. Still doesn’t think cars need break fluid.
In an age of Amber alerts and a constant culture of fear propaganda, helicopter parents cause us to imagine these stats are opposite. We’ve imagined and created dangers and fears where they simply don’t exist. Our kids suffer because of it. We should be parenting from a position of trust, not hard-wiring them for a life of fear.
When I was a teenager, I road my bike to school once or twice a year. I lived outside of town in the farmlands of southern Illinois, so that trek was 7.5 miles of hilly country roads in the middle of nowhere out to one major highway. I was around fourteen and completely unsupervised, though often with my twin brother. This was only fourteen years ago.
In fact, violent crime is half of what it was just 20 years ago. Yet, parents live in constant fear that something horrible is about to happen to their kids.
Yeah, crime is at an all-time low, yet parents are in complete freakout.
But why do so many people feel this will happen to them? Internet posts and the 24-hour news cycle have created the illusion that pedophiles and kidnappers lurk just around every corner.
I’d go further. It used to be said that it takes a village to raise a child. In the village I grew up in, everyone knew my parents. They went to school with them, church with them, and were friends with them. If I didn’t tell my parents when I did something stupid, all likelihood pointed at them hearing it through the grapevine. It used to be that we trusted our neighbors to help with our children. Now we seldom know them. What’s worse, when our neighbors see our kids unsupervised, they call the cops. So now we fear what our neighbors think about our parenting. We’ve forsaken the village that could help with our children for fear.